Hello GVR Games!
I wanted to pop on over and check out your game. You should be impressed with the work you did here! I had a few thoughts while reading that I'd like to share with ya:
1. This is a fun concept. Cause, of course, every fantasy world needs a science fair! One thing you might want to consider - who are these people? Are they people? To me, they sounded like goblins or gnomes through and though - due to the blowing up haha. The more specific theming you can paint for the the reader, the better we'll be able to get into your world.
2. A few phrases stuck out a bit to me. One of them was "excited (nervous)", I might change that to "nervous excitement". Little tweaks like that will just help the prose flow better. Also spell check on "catastrophe".
3. LOVE that you can slot this into any other ttrpg. That's a very nice design consideration.
4. I'd move up naming the character in the order. Gotta know who you are to know what they would invent.
5. The drawing element reminds me of the board games Luck of the Draw & Telestrations. Both a lot of fun and I think it's interesting / fun to have players draw. Something to consider, what is the Judge judging on? A table of "The Judge is Looking For:" would be excellent here.
6. The Pit of Potential is absolutely great! The concept of creating things from a pile of junk excites me (also giving me major Junkyard Wars vibes if you know that TV show). It's great that you give the players Prefixes, Nouns and Suffixes on the character sheet, but I know I'd want to write in my own.
7. I'm not sure you want to use the dice to represent the 2-12 on the Pit. Unless we have to get those exact dice combinations. If that is the case, I'd have it be so that if you don't get one of the results - then you roll a Catastrophe.
8. I'd love a prize table! What are the stakes of winning this weird contest beyond the glory?
9. The look of the game is sharp. I might recommend lowering the font to give yourself a tiny bit more white space to play with. Trust me, I know how hard it is to fit all the things on a single page haha.
10. All the player powers are funny and thematically interesting! I might avoid the, you can automatically chose to have yours be the winner cause that's too powerful. Maybe have it be something like for this round there is a second prize winner and the points are split 1st: 3, 2nd: 2 & if your character specifically isn't chosen you get 1 point. Just check balance.
Overall, GREAT first game. I'm excited to see what you do with all of these really interesting design elements!